Book Review: My first thought was to relate The Vegetarian to Kafka, but I don't think that works over the length of the book; it's not that simple. Perhaps it's closer in theme to Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener. The novel kept me reading and thinking throughout. The story is told by three narrators, with only short excerpts revealing the thoughts and feelings of the protagonist. The first narrator, her husband, views her as unremarkable as himself, and has no ambition beyond conformity, which he, mistakenly, thinks will include his wife. He anticipates and accepts an ultimately deadening and debilitating life, a life without living. Cruelly denying his wife any aspirations beyond his non-existent dreams. The second narrator is her brother-in-law, who lives on her sister's income. He is an artist who sees in the protagonist the fulfillment of his artistic vision, without any appreciation of the cost to her, or any benefit to or fulfillment of her own vision. He narcissistically turns her into a fetish of his fantasy, succeeding because her own dreams have some coincidence. The third narrator is her sister, a successful entrepreneur who supports her husband and child, and alone runs both home and business. Her sister has managed to conform to, even succeed in society, while subject to the same fears and vulnerabilities of her damaged sister. She shows how thin the line between sanity and (what we view as) insanity can be ("It was a fact. She had never lived."). Here our protagonist, seeks to react against her brutal, abusive father (who physically abused her but not her siblings) by finding a way in life to do no harm, she seeks to become a harmless creature, self-sufficient, neither needing nor feeding upon others, barely interacting with humanity. Her understanding of her life, of her choice not participate in life or society, changes throughout The Vegetarian. It is her parents, particularly her father, who react most aggressively against her vegetarianism, her father violently, her mother deviously. Her husband and siblings are frustrated and troubled by her choice, but take few direct actions about it. The violence of her parents (physical and mental) drives her to become a creature that does no harm, that does not hurt others. If one views the patriarchy as a source of violence, her response fits perfectly. If one views parents (representing society) as the source of a child's pain, as the ones that bend the twig, that control the child at the expense of the child's own destiny, own aspirations, her reaction also fits. Other possible interpretations exist. Yet those around her view her actions (as she returns to infancy) as insanity, which the reader may also identify in her actions (her insanity causes her to harm), if not her aim. Her attempt to cause no harm, to be nonvalent, to have no effect, angers, frustrates, and confuses those around her ("what she had renounced was the very life that her body represented"). Suggesting that the demands of society require us to do harm, to injure, to be unkind, even to those we do not know. How do we live a life like that? An insane society sees an effort to resist and deny its inherent violence as insanity. Choosing not to participate is not an acceptable option. The Vegetarian is open-ended and thoughtful as it must be when it is about something deep inside us, what makes us, where we begin. [4½★]
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